Empire Metals (LSE:EEE) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good morning, and welcome to the EMPIRE METALS LIMITED Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll.

0:31 And I would now like to hand you over to managing director, Sean Bunn. Good morning to you, sir. Yeah. Good morning, Alex, and thank you for the introduction. And welcome to those those on the call, our shareholders and other, interested investors. I welcome this opportunity to give you a, you know, a brief overview of where the company is currently sitting and what our strategic direction is going to be over the next, you know, twelve, eighteen months. So I think it's really important, you know, juncture in in the growth of of EMPIRE METALS and great opportunity to bring you all, along for the ride. So, without further ado, I'd like to maybe just slip into the presentation.

1:24 Just a a cautionary note about forward looking statements and the fact that our all our work has been checked by a competent person, but, of course, we we need to remind people that this is not a an effort to try and promote or, sell extra shares at the moment. So on to, the detail. So what look, it's been a very, very important last six to twelve months for EMPIRE METALS. We've moved, from a very small, high grade gold focus, at the Eclipse, you know, project instead of Kalgoorlie. We built onto that what is basically a a very large portfolio of high grade copper gold and base metal prospects in two major regions of Australia.

2:19 So the the the focus at the moment has been largely on building, you know, high quality assets within the Yilgarn Craton, which is, you know, a large part of the West Australian gold fields and Nickelbelt, you know, a major source of some big copper projects. Also, we have a a very strategic position in Victoria at the Stabley Arc, just north of a of a very successful discovery made by by Australian explorer called Stabley Minerals, and that's a very exciting target as well. We're particularly focused now on Pitfield. I think you'll you'll hear a lot about Pitfield today. Pit Field is what we believe an emerging giant copper system. It's it's an amazing, target for us. It has huge potential and we are very excited about that development.

3:13 We've also continued to be drilling at the Eclipse and Jindalbi area over the last twelve months, and we're we're very excited about the prospect of getting some value out of that particular license area. We're advancing that quite well. And we, of course, have the other project coming online soon, which would be Walton, is in the Southern Cross domain. Strong board, talented exploration team, well funded. We are really starting to gain some momentum. So talking to the board just very briefly, most of the shareholders now know who I am. I've been with the company just over eighteen months. Greg, who's also on the call, a financial director, has been with the company for for a much longer period of time since its formation.

4:03 And I'm very pleased to also highlight the fact that we have doctor Neil O'Brien, who is a very senior exploration, expert, excellent in mining, was the senior vice president of exploration for that group and, you know, has a very big interest in supporting us in terms of how we're developing, particularly the pit field target. And Peter DeMooney, who is our, one of our nine executive directors, you know, very experienced financial guy and he's been a great support to us over the last, you know, several years in terms of building capacity at the board level to, to raise money and execute our work program. So coupled with that, we've been recently announced, the, the recruitment of Andrew Ferrara.

4:56 Now Andrew brings with him a wealth of experience, not just in in copper, but also in a a number of major commodities. Andrew was a very senior employee of Rio Tinto. He was the chief geologist for the iron ore and bauxite division. And prior to that, he was the exploration manager, for basically the Canadian operations. So we're really pleased that we were able to recruit someone with Andrew's experience and caliber. He's only been with us a few weeks. He'd be on the call this evening, but he's actually on the side of Pitfield along with Ed Boulters, our exploration consultant. They've been up there for the last few days, surface mapping, doing some of the groundwork ahead of our drilling.

5:44 Ed, who you'd be familiar with now, has been with the company for just over eighteen months as a consultant, but he's also one of the key founders of Century Minerals who is the joint venture partner in Pitfield. Louisa Stokes, is a very talented, very capable exploration geologist. She's actually doing a PhD at the Curtin University at the moment. So she is assisting us with a lot of the technical strategic, you know, reviews, but she also has obviously a requirement to complete a PhD. So she is working intermittently on our projects.

6:29 A quick glance at where we stand in terms of our corporate shareholders and our structure. Currently, share price when we went to publish this at 2.3 p, capital a market cap just over £11,000,000, and we have just under, 500,000,000 shares on issue, 483,000,000 roughly. So we've got a strong share price at the moment. We're pushing up. We're we're battling the headwinds. We've got a number of new significant shareholders that have come on to the register in the last three to six months, and we're very pleased to see, you know, some very, you know, experienced and senior, you know, shareholders starting to take interest in the Pitfield story. And, you know, we believe this is a good sign for the company, you know, moving forward in terms of having a really stable, strong shareholder base.

7:32 And with that said, I think the most important thing to discuss on this particular call and give people a chance to digest exactly what we've achieved in the last few months is really the focus on on Pitfield. So Pitfield is a is a really unique geological occurrence. It sits on the western margin of the yield going pattern and it sits basically at the juncture of two major faults. So there's a Darling fault system that runs along the western side of the Yilgan and separates that from the Perth Basin. And then there's this Yandanuka, Lineament. It's a it's a fault system that comes up through the Kraton and they crossover. They crossover exactly along strike just from our, our pit field project. So these two major faults have no doubt created some some pretty major, you know, structural faulting around this particular area of Pitfield.

8:32 The most unique thing about Pitfield though is it it's it's age. So in terms of geological age, it's what we call a near protozoic basin. And this is a very unique area of Western Australia because the only other Neo protozoic rocks within this particular part, these these old rock systems within Western Australia. This is up in the the Paterson Province and that's where you have Nifty, you have Telfer, you have some really major copper discoveries. So the the Neo protozoics are globally important area epic for for copper mineralization. We know this area has been previously explored by majors, but that was probably ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago now. So we've we know that the the early exploration phases that were applied never resulted in any extensive drilling into the actual sediment hosts that we believe the copper deposits lie in.

9:35 There are numerous historic copper mines within the area, particularly Baxter's, which is just a few kilometers to the, to the west of our particular targets. And they, they mine copper ore, copper rock between 20 to 30% copper. So very high grade copper mineralization spread up and down the entire basin. And interesting enough, this is an area that has been underexplored, this whole western margin of the Yilgarn. Yet in the recent years, we've seen some major discoveries, particularly I flagged the Julimar project. It's a nickel copper PGE project owned by Chalice. Now Chalice is now market capped at well over $1,000,000,000 Australian. So it's it's a major a major discovery, major, company builder. So we're very excited about the potential along that entire fault system.

10:36 Now really to zoom in on what we have discovered ourselves over the last six months. Basically, took on this project where we we could see a a gravity high from, you know, exploration work previously done by the West Australian geological, you know, institutions, the the government funded exploration programs. We knew there was a density high. So we flew a a a an airborne magnetic back in June last year, and we lit this thing up with a massive, magnetic anomaly. It's 40 kilometers north, north to south and, basically stretches almost across the whole basin. So we know that there's been a big alteration event, and this is coincident with a gravity high, but also we flew electromagnetics.

11:28 And the significance of that is the electromagnetics have picked up this highly conductive sediments around the siltstones, the sandstones around this region are conductive. Now that is extremely important in terms of our geological model. What we believe has happened is that the oxidation fluids have come up from the basin through those fault systems, those structures have pumped up into the basin. They bought up copper, they bought up other base metals, and they've come into contact with these reductive rocks. So, basically, the reductants in the rock drop out the copper. That's the theory. That's what we're looking for. And we think we are on the cusp of finding not just one, but multiple multiple sediment hosted strata bound controlled copper deposits.

12:28 Now I talked about the previous historical work and whilst, you know, no drilling, deep drilling into this particular anomaly was carried out, CRA back in 1993, they did complete a lot of soil sampling and all the sampling across this region. And what they discovered was a 10 kilometer in copper and soil anomaly just south of the Baxter's Mine, which you'll see in the middle of the, of the slide there, basically right in the middle of our tenements. So that high copper anomaly extends over 10 kilometers when you take it from the full length across from Baxter's all the way to the south. They also identified a four kilometer long copper anomaly to the north near a place called Mount Scratch.

13:18 Now we've been looking at this data, pulling it together, assessing this. We've gone back into the, into these license areas back in November that just, to to look at soil sampling. We were looking at rock chip sampling. And what we've been able to do is add ex you know, we've extended these targets by at least another four kilometers to the north, so that's now over eight kilometers of anomaly. We've picked up extremely high grade rock samples near surface. The best sample we picked up was just under 18% copper and a 125 grams per ton of silver. So highly highly, exciting. You know, these are this is float. This is rock samples that have probably been brought up by old artisanal scrapings, probably down twenty twenty, 30 meters.

14:11 So these are there's clear indication right across our license area of copper anomalism at the surface. So what we started to do, what we've really focusing our our attention to now is to identify drill targets. And we engaged a, a geophysical group of consultants back in December to start doing what we call a dipole to dipole induced polarization, geophysical surveying. So basically, you you you stretch a a a a electrical cable about two kilometers across the surface, you pump electricity into the ground, and what you're looking for is some sort of charged response or resistivity from the ground, some sort of indication that that there's, you know, something that can carry an electrical charge.

15:05 And and typically, what we're looking for, obviously, is is sulfides. We're looking to for disseminated or massive sulfides within the, within the structure. So the outcome which we announced very early in February from that work was a a very successful, you know, very remarkable response to the IP. We we weren't sure how effective the IP surveying would be, and we were very pleased with the outcome because what it basically shows is over a very large stretch of of the area that we tested over 800 meters down a 150 to 200 meters depth.

15:52 We we started to see and pick up a a very significant charge response within an area that is basically also highly resistive. So the two things coming together basically are suggesting it's characteristic of a disseminated sulfide ore body. And so, yeah, I really got excited by this. We tracked this particular target another 800 meters to the south and another line, the third line that we did another 800 meters to the south also picked up this anomaly. So now we're talking about a drill target area that is at least a 108 a 100 meters wide and well over one and a half, well, one and a half kilometers on strike on length. So, you know, it's it's a it's a really large, drill target that we've identified.

16:49 And what we, we plan to do in the next, you know, in the near future is to get back onto those particular targets with an RC rig and to start drilling and testing what it is that this IP, geophysics has identified. What's you know, until we get the the drill rigs into this, we really don't know. But, you know, obviously, we are very very, you know, as I said, excited when if this is a a great breakthrough for the company in terms of having multiple drill targets over a reasonably large area where we know that we have high copper anomalism at surface. So, now we're gonna get started on this as soon as possible.

17:37 What was interesting too was a a fifth, IP survey, which was carried out 12 kilometers to the south of this particular target, also picked up very high chargeable responses. So it's clearly an indication that this is not a a, you know, an isolated occurrence. There there could be multiple charge responses picked up across the whole 40 kilometers of of strike. And if we can demonstrate that that represents, disseminated sulfides or or or copper mineralization, then, you know, we're gonna have multiple drill targets down this whole system. To give a sense of scale, you know, 40 kilometers, if those people often think where they might be living at the time might jump in a car and try and drive 40 k's and just see, you know, how far you have to go.

18:35 It's a it's it's a big area. And we think that this is probably most comparable to, you know, one of the world's largest copper deposits. The Utican ore region within Russia represents, you know, what is basically the third largest copper deposit or resource has reserves of, just over 1,200,000,000 tons at 2% copper. So these these, these strata bound, you know, sediment hosted copper deposits have scale and they have grade. And that what's, that's what's making this, such an attractive, you know, district for us, if you like, copper bearing district, you know, to to keep our keep our drill rigs active and to keep looking for where these copper deposits might lie within this 40 kilometer, you know, anomaly.

19:34 So, again, it's it's it's it's it's a scale that is quite, quite astonishing when one looks at it from the point of view that this could have multiple, copper deposits along the whole 40 kilometer strike. Moving off pit field briefly, and happy to come back and answer questions on all of that. Our ECLIPSE of our initial target ECLIPSE, which we, we have a mining license and a and a number of high grade targets. We, we announced back in February last year that we would expand this target by entering into a tribute agreement. That tribute agreement meant that we increased our holding here from three square kilometers to over 10, and they are both mining licenses. So if

20:24 we are able to identify a a resource that is, economic in this particular area, then we can move into mine development very quickly. So there has a certain value, associated with the, with the fact that these things are already, registered as mining licenses. What's really interesting in this particular area is that we are picking up pretty well anywhere we drill near the old shafts. We're certainly picking up high grade gold mineralization. So the the the the gold is tied up in a, in a fairly narrow, north striking, a steeply dipping shear. So it tends to be,

21:11 you know, quite narrow vein gold systems, and we've been searching for some time now to pull these systems together to see whether we can find a a a an intercepts that are going to give us better width or closer to surface. And in the process of doing that, we have identified a a a different commodity within the license area, and that is, that is kaolin. It's, it's basically China clay. It's a very bright, very white industrial mineral,

21:46 used in in a number of, commodities, making particularly things like China that most people are probably, eating their dinner off. Glossy paper, is is predominantly, using this type of, know, feedstock. And most recently, it's become a potential, resource for high purity aluminum. So we're quite excited about the potential of this discovery. And to give you a sort of sense of where that lies, The two main goal targets that we've identified that we've been working on, which was the Eclipse target on the, on our initial license area, the Homeward bound target where we announced early last year a number of really stellar grade intercepts, you know, five meters at nearly nine grams, another three meters at at nine grams or 10 grams. So we we really really have some high grade targets here. But what was interesting was the Cayllon is actually formed a a deposit just northwest of that homeward bound trend, and it heads towards what we believe crosses our license into the Eclipse license area.

23:11 So our our plan here is to look at doing a a further drill program to see the extent of the cavern and to complete metallurgical test work, to ascertain the quality of the kaolin in terms of of, you know, is this something we can quickly dig up, screen, dry, and ship, to to the market. So it it's it's an exciting prospect, but one that is being treated with, with patients. We don't intend to, you know, divert our attention from pit field, and we certainly think that the Pitfield project is where the company's future lies, this could simply be, you know, a small cash cow for us to continue to develop and generate, you know, a reasonable amount of cash to support further development of pit field.

24:10 Moving, to the last couple of projects just briefly. We talked about Stavely. It's in an excellent position. The Staveley Arc is is highly prospective. It's, it's a Cambrian arc. It's a volcanic arc, located not too far from some pretty major gold, zones in terms of,

24:32 you know, the store gold operations in Bendigo area where we have Foster Field, which is a pretty major underground gold development, and, of course, the old store gold mines. We also, as we said early in the presentation, are sitting exact a long strike, basically north along strike from the Stabley Minerals discovery at Thursday Gossam, which which identified 32 meters at 6% copper. So, you know, certainly something that we would be looking to replicate once we get on the ground at Staveley, at the Staveley project. And we're looking forward to that. We we should be advancing onto that towards the end of this year once we've completed our initial drill programs at Pitfield and and and followed up on the target, the Kalin target at at Jindalbi, we would probably do a small

25:32 small airborne magnetic survey at at Staveley initially and then follow that up with any any early exploration work to identify potentially a copper porphyry. So Staveley has a number of of previous targets that were located within the license area and just to the south. But predominantly, we know that there has been charcus charcophyrite quartz dolomite veins intercepted in an area called Mine Paddock, is within the license area and sits within,

26:08 or sits over a number of volcanics that we've identified from, you know, government regional survey. So this is the area that we would probably focus our attention and particularly in terms of flying further aeromagnetics.

26:27 At Walton, an interesting project for us, Walton. It's within the Southern Cross domain of Western Australia. So it's basically in the middle of this Uldown Uldown Craton. It sits within Greenstone belts. So the, you know, the famous Greenstones here are are renowned for for, you know, the HMS systems. It's it's we've had nickel discoveries. We've seen high grade gold projects. And we've recently seen, you know, lithium projects in these particular systems. So, you know, Walton presents for us a an opportunity to to get into a greenfields area that is in a highly prospective, really good postcode.

27:17 And, you know, without spending a lot of time and money, we can do a lot of surface work just to see what potential there is at Walton, before we decide whether or not we need to go back in and drill. So it's it's it's on the slow burn at the moment, but nonetheless, could be a very exciting, part of our portfolio.

27:41 So to summarize pretty well where we, where we are at this particular point in time and what we see coming forward in terms of news flow, for this quarter, quarter, 01/2023, we've already commenced further IP surveying and geochemical mapping. So we've been on the ground the last few weeks. We've had another sequence of of IP surveys completed. They have not yet been assessed by our geophysics

28:16 consultants, but we expect to get that within the next couple of weeks. And that could well provide us with further drilling targets for the for the maiden drilling program. We've also advanced to the point where we have all the approvals in place to start drilling at Pitfield, and we are in the midst of starting to look at at the timing of that project in terms of mobilization. But we certainly are on track, I think, to, you know, to get on the ground there in in the in the near future. So we're we're excited about the potential, and we will make an announcement as soon as we've confirmed the the drilling mobilization and starting date and and get that market information out.

29:06 The we talked a little bit about the Cailin discovery at Jindalbi. So that work commenced early January. So, basically, over the last, you know, few weeks, we've been assessing that Kailin potential as well as the high grade gold in the area. And we will be planning further metallurgical test work coming up to get a handle on the quality of that particular target. So moving into Q2, the IP survey and geochemical mapping will continue. We will make our maiden RC drilling project that will start. That's our priority at Pitfield. And the met testing and evaluation of the Kalin at at the Eclipse in Derby should be that initial program will be completed.

29:59 Moving into the third quarter, I would expect I would expect that we would be developing and prioritizing some new drill targets at Pitfield, certainly capturing the reconnaissance work that we've started, you know, at the end of this quarter early early q two. And I stress that reconnaissance word because, basically, the drilling that we will do at Pitfield is reconnaissance. It's very early phase, basically testing the concept that we have a sediment hosted strata bound, you know, copper deposits. So we need to get our drill rigs into that material to see what it is that we're picking up on the IP.

30:45 And once we have that information, we can then better focus a second phase of drilling to to advance that project to, you know, to start to really find where these copper anomalies are sitting below the surface. I would expect that we would be drilling at Eclipse and Jindalbi in that particular quarter. I think it's highly likely it'll be an aircore program, you know, shallow drilling, wide spacing, relatively low cost that we would seek to add significant volume to this carbon target and, you know, hopefully, you know, come up with a a resource at the end of that particular drill campaign. I don't see why we we can't advance that very quickly.

31:38 Airborne geophysical surveys would almost certainly have started at at stably. We we can certainly schedule that. We don't need to get on the ground physically. You know, we could start that pretty well anytime over the next six months once the window opens up to to get the the geophysical team in there. And I would certainly expect to be on the ground at Walton even if it's just geological mapping, rock and soil sampling just to just to start to see what molten might contain, you know, what clues we can get from that work to see what molten might might have under under its, you know, under the the sort of surface crust that we can see, you know, from the, you know, from the area, you know, the aerial imaging.

32:29 Moving on to the final, chapter of this particular year, I'd certainly expect to be drilling multiple targets at Pitfield. I think that's highly likely we will be on the ground again. You know, hopefully, we can accelerate that and get drilling programs started sooner. But, you know, realistically, we need to get the information from the reconnaissance program. We need to lay everything out and prepare, you know, a really comprehensive work program. But I would certainly be looking to get stuck into that as quickly as possible. I would hope to be doing some resource modeling and studies on the Kalin targets and any other gold high grade gold targets at Eclipse and Jindalbi. Again, looking looking to come up with a reasonably quick quick low cost, you know, entry into a producing operation where we can generate our own cash flow.

33:28 And that would set us up, you know, really nicely for the future in terms of major work programs at something like Pitfield. Data collection and analysis would be ongoing at Staley and Walton. But, again, as I can I've emphasized, I think that we would see those as being somewhat of a slow burn at the moment in keeping our focus on pit field. So in summary, you know, you know, what is our our message? You know, what are we what are we, you know, what are we selling in terms of of potential here within EMPIRE METALS? Clearly, Pitfield has all the hallmarks of a giant copper mineralized system. Now it it it if you had to put down 10 things on a bit of paper that said, you know, what are you looking for?

34:21 Is this here? Yeah. We've probably ticked off somewhere between seven or eight of them. And and every time we get new information, that information collaborates or or or supports our theory. So we've been very excited. It's time to drill. You know, now is the time to put the drill program together and get, get assays into those particular targets. I think Eclipse Jindalbi remains highly prospective for us. There's value there within those tenements. We've spent quite a lot of money over the recent years building up that particular project. I don't think that's gonna be wasted. I think we'll get something out of that particular asset, and, you know, I look forward to coming back to the market, you know, in in the months ahead to to confirm that we, you know, we've got something that we can turn into a a viable operation and generate cash flow.

35:22 You know, we spent a lot of time in the last twelve months, eighteen months reducing our risk, growing the company. We we built ourselves up from three square kilometers to 2,155 square kilometers over four major projects. These are, geographically diverse. They are geologically diverse. You know, we're hunting copper. We're hunting gold. We've got other commodities on our sites now. We're dealing with, you know, sediment hosted copper targets, but but yet stably, we're looking for porphyry. So, you know, we have diversified ourselves. We've got the capacity within the team to manage that, and I believe that's that's reduced our our exploration risk, you know, considerably.

36:13 I think we have huge potential, great postcodes. We're in the right commodities. I think, you know, there's a there's a lot coming down the pipeline for for EMPIRE in terms of exploration success. We've built a great team. We had a great board to start with. We've got great talent across, you know, from the chairman all the way down to our exploration geologists. You know, I'm I'm really pleased that we're able to recruit such a strong exploration manager in this market. Really happy that we've been able to bolster the team. So, you know, we are self sufficient in terms of expertise, and we are now even more so well funded. And I'm really pleased that we're able to, you know, get a small fundraising away when we did closing it out last well, announcing it on Monday that we'd we'd managed to raise £1,250,000 in the market, you know, before cost. But what I think that has done in terms of securing our immediate future is it it means that should we be successful with this first drill campaign at Pitfield, we can roll on. You know, we can continue the work. We don't have to pull up stumps.

37:32 We don't have to wait to go back and say, look, we're gonna need some more money to drill further. We are, you know, literally bulletproof at this particular point in time over the next twelve months to get on the ground, do the work, deliver the results. Excuse me. So I'm very happy to say that that's that's what we've been able to put together in the last twelve months, and I'm looking forward to certainly the next next few months to to come back to the come back to the shareholder base here, give another presentation like this one on the back of exploration success. So, you know, happy to take any questions as we as I think Alex mentioned the process.

38:18 Sure. I'll pass it back to Alex. Sure. Great. That's great. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. I will now bring your cameras back up. Ladies and gentlemen, please continue to submit your questions using the q and a tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Sean, Greg? As you can see, we have received several questions throughout today's presentation. And if I could just hand over to you to read out those questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you both at the end. Thank you. Well, certainly. I'll start and if I Greg, if I if if if it looks like it's something you'd be better, I'll hand pass to you.

39:10 So the first question that's come up is how quickly can you get a rig on-site? Are there any long lead times? The answer is we have already gone contracted the rig. So we have a rig booked. We don't yet haven't given them a start date to mobilize because, we're still putting together the final details. But, you know, it it it's it's a it's an unusual, period here in Western Australia for the drilling community. In fact, that they're they're actually, it's pretty quiet, to be honest. Post post the, our summer holidays, it's it's it's been the weather's been pretty brutal, to be honest. So a lot of rain in the North. A lot of the a lot of the the companies have rigs actually on on standby.

40:02 So we managed to get a a very good, very capable drilling contractor, highly experienced in in drilling in these these pastoral areas. Really happy that we were able to secure that, and we'll announce the commencement of drilling, as soon as we pinpoint their mobilization. I I think it's fair to say, Sean, it's a matter of weeks. You know, we're we're not talking months. It's it's weeks. But as Sean said, we'll we'll put put out, the firm date once we've been able to finalize these last couple of last couple of items. Yes. What is the strategy to maximize the value of the assets? Will you look to prove up and sell or partner?

40:49 I I think that that's a good question, obviously. It's saying that we consider, and talk amongst ourselves at the board level where where is EMPIRE's future lies, where are we going. But right now, we're we're such an early exploration. We're we're we're at such an early exploration phase. And I think we have such huge potential on on not just the pit field, license area, but but the others have have, you know, great postcodes, great opportunities. I I would be very low for us to to, you know, to step away from any of those things prematurely. I think we need to do the work. For the last twelve months, I've been talking about, you know, you do the science, you do the hard yards, you you you get your information, you get your data, you you you you work out exactly what you might or might not have and you do an evaluation.

41:48 And then, you know, we'll come back. We'll discuss that not only amongst the board, but we would be, you know, presenting optionality to, you know, explaining our strategy as we go. I think if Pitfield was to turn out to be a a a a, you know, one of the world's major copper discoveries, then naturally, at some point in the future, we would have to consider bringing in a a a large partner. But right now, I I can, you know, I can drill that up and down 40 kilometers and keep hitting, hopefully, copper. Hopefully, we'll start hitting copper mineralization in in the first drill program. You know, we will have we will we will have multiple major partners knocking on our door looking to to somehow get a get a seat at the table.

42:39 So, yep, it's all part of our, overall strategy. The Eclipse project for short term cash flow looks key. How long do you anticipate from drill results to production potentially? When we started with the Eclipse project that was on the premise that there could be a small open pit high grade gold get in, get out, maybe mine it over twelve months, make make a few million dollars. And, you know, to be honest, you know, I think eighteen months ago when I joined, we we we presented to the market that that that wasn't that wasn't a strategy at the time that we thought was wise. We thought it was high risk.

43:27 There was potential to make some money. Yes. There's also potential to lose some money. So we've we've kept our powder dry on that. We are assessing potential to go back to Eclipse and and relook at at a gold small gold producing operation there. We're also obviously looking at bolting on, you know, the high grade gold targets that we've identified at Jindalbi, particularly around the home state. It could be a, you know, another small gold project there that we could bring into production and and toll free. But, you know, I personally think we, you know, this Kailin discovery needs this is an itch that we need to scratch. We we need to go in and have a good look at what that deposit represents and get some valuation on it because that could be worth a lot more than any of these small gold projects in in my mind. And if that is the case, then we can get into production quite quickly.

44:31 I mean, this this this this deposit has virtually no no cover. Now there's no sir there's no overburden. You you dig the top meter off and you're into the ore. And we're on a direct shipping route down the road, Sealed Road, 55 kilometers to a railhead straight out to the port. So it it might sound very simple, but the reality is, you know, when you're dealing with an industrial commodity, if you can knock down the market and get a a and get sufficient buyers interested in this product, you know, we we can start mining pretty quickly. So I'm actually think that's got quite a lot of potential for us as a as a small cash cow.

45:22 Just trying to interpret the next question. Can you comment recent? Do you want me to take that one, Sean? Yeah. Yes. I think so. But that's assume that's interactive investor, is it? Well, the the question is commenting on the recent, investment. Are there any institutions currently being spoken to? And at what point do we think they'd be excited about EMPIRE? Look. The the more the recent placing that was announced earlier this week, was predominantly there was a a retail portion of it. There were a couple smaller funds, and then we've got a number of these high net worths. You know, Sean alluded to at the start of his his talk, this this project has now managed to capture the interest of, a number of investors in in Australia.

46:15 And, you know, these are these are people who have had significant experience in the sector, made made a lot of money along the way, and have now, have now identified EMPIRE as a as a very prospective, target. As far as institutions, we have made a concerted effort, particularly over the last three months since Pitfield's really, grown to be at the forefront of of what we're looking at, to start talking to investors, sorry, institutional investors. We have had a number of meetings with UK based institutions. We've actually also had quite a few meetings with Australian based institutions.

47:05 And a lot of that's just about getting on their radar. I mean, at this stage, we're still too small. But, you know, in the same way, we've identified the the the potential scale of of, again, Pitfield. These institutions are also pretty excited about the potential as well. So while we're still too small at this stage, we're definitely getting on people's radars. We're having discussions. We're being followed by a number of a very large parties. So I think as as we continue to have success and as we grow, we will naturally start to sort of change that shareholder profile and look to bring bring on funds and larger institutions.

47:55 Hopefully, that answers your And I think we're getting a good spread too. I think we're starting to see a lot more investors come out of the Australian investors scene, and that's really encouraging in my mind. Yeah. Particularly given particularly given it's pretty tough for Australians to invest in the in in particularly the AIM market. There's a lot of a lot of the Australian brokers just don't wanna deal with the additional work that's required to invest on AIM. So the fact that, that there's a quite significant group of people who are now making that effort, I think is a is is a is a real positive as well. Absolutely.

48:41 Next question. How will exploration be impacted by agricultural requirements locally? So particularly at Pitfield, we'll answer that directly. Pitfield is a predominant well, it is a a part of the wheat belt, the Northern wheat belt system. Had a really good crop last year, by the way. So they've you know, farmers are all very happy. We've, we've got land access agreements on five of these these properties at the moment with a number of the the the the landowners considering, and we're discussing further access agreements. We prioritize them, so it's not like only five out of the, you know, a dozen or so have have agreed. It it was basically the first five priorities that we went to have all signed up.

49:32 So what that effectively allows us to do in consultation with the landowner is get on the property and do ground disturbing activities, like, you know, for instance, drilling. And, you know, there's been no problem whatsoever so far with working with them. We've we've seized the opportunity to get in now because in in Australian farming sequence, they've already harvested. So the the crops won't go back in until probably, you know, some of the first rains towards the end of April, May. So we're mindful of that. We don't wanna be driving across and putting big rigs across their paddocks without reasonable, you know, confidence that we, you know, we're about to find more copper. But so we were sequencing our activities with the farmers.

50:34 We have, really good relationships at the moment. If it comes to a point in time where we need to get onto a field and there's crop, that that that's not a problem. We have a compensation arrangement with the farmers where we compensate them for whatever crop damages or or crop losses they incur. It it's just, you know, common sense in my mind that you try and and and avoid getting into those situations by good planning. So, you know, that's our first priority. Don't disturb the farms unless you, you know, have no choice. Work with the farmers. We've already talked to one of the farmers. They're gonna provide accommodation for our drill rig crew.

51:22 Another farmer's doing all the rehab and cleanup work for us. So the, you know, the farmers are actually getting some direct benefit out of their activities on-site as well. So it's it's a it's a good relationship. I think it's important to note here again the scale really affects this as well. I mean, if we were looking at a, say, an eclipse sized project, a couple square kilometers of high grade gold, your your your work is focused on that particular point. And if if you can't access that, you can't access it. But we given the scale of of Pitfield, it would be, I I think, extremely unlikely that we would find a situation where all of our target all of our targets, you know, were were were under crop or or inaccessible.

52:09 I mean, that's just not gonna happen. So And that's great. Can access. And and there and it's not all farm. It's not all paddocks too, by the way. There are natural bush lands within the farming regions. There are corridors that aren't under crop. So, you know, we've left those. They don't form part of our priority targets this first campaign because, you know, logically, if if we go back and drill in the next few months and the crops have been planted, we can go to areas, for instance, where there's just natural bushland and and complete the next phase of drilling if if the targets are there. So we no no great concern at at Pitfield or or any of the other projects for that matter in terms of of land access.

53:01 Sean, Greg, that's great. And thank you for addressing all those questions that came in from investors today. And, of course, the company will review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the investor meet company platform. But perhaps before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to you and the company? Sean, could I please ask you for a few closing comments? Thank you. Well well, to simplify things, I think the potential that we've unearthed at Pitfield is is, you know, of a scale that that, you know, we probably didn't imagine six months ago that we would be sitting here talking about a giant copper province or or district. But, you know, that's the way it's it's worked out. As we've done further and further work at Pitfield, our confidence level that we're on the you know, we we've got something pretty major globally is is higher and higher, and we're going to drill. And, you know, the great news is that we've set ourselves up to do that. We we we we've we've got the funds.

54:01 We've planned the drilling work. We've got the the exploration team in place. You know, we've we've done all the things over the last six to twelve months to set this company up for for success. And I think, you know, I can't wait to the to to till we get on the ground there now and start to to get some results. So, yep, Pitfield is is clearly our our our our first and and foremost priority. And as I said, I I look forward to keeping the market informed about how we're going in that particular area. And and, of course, on the other assets, once we get started there, if if we discover something, it'll be with the equal enthusiasm to to bring things into, you know, get some value from our our portfolio.

54:55 That's great. Thank you, Sean and Greg, once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of EMPIRE METALS LIMITED, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's meeting. Good afternoon to you all. Thanks. Thank you.